A few prominent BitTorrent search engines are celebrating their 8th anniversary this year.

On July 24 Torrentz silently celebrated its birthday, and this week it’s isoHunt’s turn. They even have a special anniversary t-shirt designed for the hardcore fans.

Although the site itself was founded in January of 2003, torrent were first added on August 1st.

isoHunt‘s founder Gary Fung has posted a few comments on this new milestone explaining that despite pressure from big media, they’re not going away anytime soon.

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“It’s been 8 years since isoHunt began searching the internet for torrents, almost as long as BitTorrent itself. 8 years since isoHunt began its life, hosted off a cable modem and on my home PC. Since then, isoHunt has grown from a hobby to one of the 200 largest websites on the internet, with users worldwide conducting over 12 million searches per day (or 142 queries every second).”

“We now operate 2 server racks, collocated in 2 separate datacenters, in Canada and in Sweden. I believe we are the oldest, major BitTorrent search engine still in operation since 2003, and perhaps the only one with servers in simultaneous operation in 2 different corners of the world. While we cannot claim zero downtime, we pride ourselves in bringing you the best, fastest and most reliable search results available for BitTorrent files”

“All of these give reasons to celebrate. Perhaps especially that during these years, 6.5 years ago we received our letters with the MPAA, and 5.5 years ago they sued. Counting the years, it amazes me really that we’ve lasted this long. Many other P2P networks and services have failed, legally or financially. We are still fighting our lawsuit in the US with a pending Appeal.”

“A trial by jury is what we asked for, and we can only hope that for the sake of search engine neutrality and your freedom to search that we be granted a fair trial. We’ll need your continued support in this. Same goes for ourother lawsuit with *cough* Music Canada.”